The Shame of Teen Books and Book Three

So, let’s be honest. It seems like I gave up on my one and only resolution in the first month. But really, what has happened is, rather than helping me get back into reading, this project of mine has hindered this. When I read for myself, I have no shame in what I am reading. What I have discovered about reading with the intention to write about it is that I become very self-conscious about the content of whatever book I have picked up. This last month, I have started but not finished six books. As you know, I loved Judging a Book by It’s Lover, and you would think that I learned the lesson I partially professed to have taken from it, which is not to be ashamed of my reading choices. The book I have read most recently is actually the third I have finished, but I still don’t know what I want to say about the second, so onward we go. 

The third of the proposed fifty - ever more daunting - was Sisterhood Everlasting by Ann Brashares, and I can honestly say that I loved it. 

I have read all of the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants series and waited until now to read the final one simply because I thought that I had outgrown them. The first one was published my senior year of high school and I bought it while working at my first bookstore job. I loved it and had no shame about it. Over the last 11 years I have developed a bit of a complex about teen books. At some point I decided that despite my love of many teen books, there was something shameful about admitting that I loved them. This has been compounded in recent years by the creation of the “teen paranormal romance” genre. To admit that you have read the Twilight books, and even (gasp) enjoyed them is tantamount to admitting that your IQ is about half what people may have previously thought. (I’ll admit, I read all of them in 5 days.) I took a class at MSU where Marcus Zusak’s The Book Thief was required reading. We spent a day’s discussion on what it means to be a young adult or teen book, what makes them different from either children’s books or adult books. I don’t remember a lot of what was concluded in that discussion, but I do remember walking away thinking that just because a book is intended for a certain audience, does not mean that it cannot be enjoyed by anyone else. I have had to remind myself of this in order to stop feeling like I should be reading within certain confines.

Back to Sisterhood Everlasting, this is a book that is not actually meant to be a teen book. It is intended to be general fiction, and simply a continuation of the series. For those of you who have not read the books, they are about four friends, who have been friends since they were born (within a month of each other) who find a pair of jeans that tie them together over four summers. The books show their struggles with becoming adults, independent of each other while still maintaining their friendship. The pants are mainly a symbol of what ties them together (love, family, friendship). So… on to the newest book.It shows where they are 10 years later. The tone of this book is much more mature and shows where the girls would realistically be on the verge of thirty. They are all spread across the world and are still struggling to come to terms with who they are and what they want out of life. At this point they are the individuals that you would expect and have grown out of the inseparability of childhood friendship. At the outset of a reunion between the four, everything changes. 

As a whole, this book (as well as its four teen counterparts) is completely sentimental. It’s pretty formulaic, it is bittersweet and at times I did feel like I could be spending my time reading something a little more intelligent. But really when it comes down to it, this book reminded me why I love reading. Because I could relate to a lot of it, and because for the day that I spent reading it, I was lost in it. I never felt like it was going to be a chore to get back to it. I wasn’t dreading writing about it, or even thinking about writing about it. And really this post hasn’t really even been about the book. I do recommend it, as with the rest of the series, if you’re willing to read it. But really what I recommend is reading what you like, not what you think you should be reading.